Private Revolution
by Splintered Star
Summary: Set directly after Parade Day and features spoilers for the same. Alone in his Strexcorp cell, Cecil finds an unexpected compatriot. Not every rebellion is doomed.


Cecil sits on the floor of his comfortably furnished cell, his head resting on the one stretch of wall not covered with posters or TV screens. The cell is roomy, featuring several comfortable-looking chairs and an inviting replica of his bed. But the chairs hum with internal electronics and the bed squirms with twisting wires, so he leans against the wall instead.

Everywhere he looks, he sees another bright yellow poster with a brighter smiling sun on it, or a TV screen with a smiling androgynous face. Embedded speakers in the ceiling purr gently about how /easy/ it is to become perfect – all he has to do is lay down, just go to sleep and he will wake up renewed, /resurrected/, made /perfect/.

He does not sleep. Instead, he closes his eyes against the yellow haze and hums a snippet from last week's weather to block out the sound. He frowns as humming slowly, unconsciously, shifts to match the catchy jingle in the background of the speaker's rhetoric. He huffs out a breath and shakes his head, more frustrated than concerned. He has survived Retraining from Station Management and Reeducation from the Secret Police. He'll be fine, as long as Night Vale survives.

If it survives. He is no longer convinced. He laid his every card on the table and rushed forward, only to turn and find himself abandoned, his faith betrayed, his noble charge merely a meaningless gesture.

He lets out another breath through his nose and his fists clench in the dirty fabric of his slacks. No. All is not lost. Dana walks free, Old Woman Josie and her allies are at work. His city will be free, if they have to burn it to the ground to rid it of the infection.

"Oh wow, that looks uncomfortable!" Cecil opens his magenta eyes, and thinks about mirrors. "Why aren't you using one of the chairs?" Kevin stands on the other side of the plasma barrier with an expression of honest confusion and deep black pits for eyes. "I mean, I haven't spent a lot of time in Night Vale, but I know I saw /chairs/."

Cecil feels a faint ripple in his eyes as the magenta bursts brighter and loses any vestige of purple. His voice is his weapon, even here, and it has gone sheathed for too long.

"The chairs look…more uncomfortable."

"Oh." Kevin is the picture of disappointment, quickly becoming the picture of hopeful assistance. "Maybe I can have them bring a more comfortable set by, if that would help?"

Cecil raises his eyebrows and his eyes shift to the red-orange of suspicion. "…I don't think that would help." Kevin ignores that, though, suddenly staring intently into Cecil's eyes. They swirl with yellow. "What?"

"There, it happened again! Your eyes changed color!" Cecil shrugs one shoulder awkwardly. It's been years since he got /that/ reaction. Even Carlos had just stared for a little while and then moved on. Cecil feels his eyes shift to dull brown with worry for a spare moment before he focuses. Carlos is fine. /Or else./ "Wow, Night Vale has a lot of interesting people! I can't wait to meet everyone while I'm filling in for you!"

Cecil narrows his eyes, staring hard, because it looked like for a single moment those deep black eyes –

"What about your own show?" He says carefully. An obvious lead in but apparently a safe one, as Kevin smiles cheerfully and the blackness of his eyes squirms like agitated snakes.

"Thanks for the concern, pal." Kevin manages to sound like every prerecorded hold message Cecil has ever heard. "But it'll be fine! I'll only take care of your show for a couple of weeks, until you're feeling better." Cecil snorts, his pink eyes shot through with green. "We're updating your booth, too." If they survive that, Cecil will be /very/ impressed. The soundboard alone has eaten three interns. "I've gotta admit, the quality of work you produced was pretty impressive for how old your equipment was!"

Cecil briefly wonders if Strex specifically trains everyone to be patronizing, or if it's just a happy side effect.

"Thank you…I think." He says, finally.

"I look forward to what you'll be able to contribute to Strexcorp when everything is perfect!" Kevin's voice overlaps with the rhetoric pumped through the speakers, resonating and adding timbers of power.

Cecil does not fall into the tempting vibration. Instead his eyes swirl red-violet as he looks up at black pits and says, very calmly, "Perfection isn't real."

-yes, it was only for a second, but –

"It's okay, I thought so too once." There, again, deep in the squirming black, there's a twist – and it's gone again with Kevin's cheerful, "But now I know better, and there's nothing stopping me from giving everything to Strex!" His eyes close in a placid smile, but not before Cecil sees –

-a tendril of sick yellow-green swirling in the black voids.

Cecil knows better. He knows he should leave it be, stay silent and stay safe. But he has stayed safe for months, stepped carefully around mines and eggshell threats. But safety has achieved nothing except a cage and a stillborn rebellion – safety, it turned out, is not even safe. So enough of safety, of holding his tongue out of fear. If he dies, even if he dies forgotten and abandoned in this comfortable cell, he will die free and untamed. It will be his own private revolution.

"What stopped you before?" Cecil asks, pink-purple eyes narrowed, "What did they make you give up?" It is challenge and interrogation and appeal to the flashes of color in those black voids. If this mirror is a true reflection….

Cecil's eyes have always shown his every emotion, pink for anger and blue for joy. But /black/ -

Kevin blinks once, twice, flesh sliding over black voids. "Oh, no one- nothing important." Kevin waves a hand as if to banish his own slip-up. "Not compared to what I have now!"

But Cecil heard, and his eyes burst into unexpected brown. Cecil's eyes only ever turned black once, just once, when Carlos lay bleeding to death underground - when Cecil was in too much pain to feel /anything/. He swallows, because that would be -

"Don't you miss them?" He asks, pressing ahead further, watching yellow sparks emerge in black voids for a bare second. "I would miss Carlos, if I was forced to give him up." His voice only hitches a bit, mentioning Carlos. They know his weak point already, and silence will not make either of them safer.

Kevin's black eyes flare with colors that, on Cecil, always meant pain – dirty yellow and sick green – before swallowing them back into the void. Kevin dodges the first question entirely, kneeling down next to the plasma barrier to meet Cecil's pink-brown eyes.

"It's okay," He says gently, "Strex will help you forget."

Oh. /Oh./ Cecil swallows, the brown in his eyes overpowering every other color for a moment. He swallows again, and then asks, "Did you forget?"

Black pit eyes squirm with orange and Kevin shrugs awkwardly, smiles apologetically. "…mostly."

Cecil lets out a breath, feeling his eyes swirl rapidly. Sympathy feeds into anger feeds into grief and back into sympathy. This company will burn, he vows inside of his head. Not just for his precious town, not just for the wreckage they have made of Night Vale, but for every broken soul they have left in their wake. Kevin watches his eyes intently with only the faintest of color in the depths of his eyes.

"If you lay down and go to sleep, when you wake up you'll feel much better!" Kevin offers with a smile that looks a little cracked around the edges. "I'm a little tired myself, after all the running around today." His eyes flicker like broken streetlamps, green-black-yellow-black-orange-black. The colors never linger for more than a second, but the tempo is increasing like the panting breaths of a panicked beast, pain-blank-fear-blank-shame-blank –

"I'm not tired." Cecil says, his back straight and eyes swirling slowly with purple. "And I don't think you are, either." Kevin blinks at him and his eyes flicker yellow-black, but Cecil throws his cards down on the table once more, running ahead alone, uncaring that no assistance will come. "What was his name?" It's a guess, but if doubles are doubles – black eyes flare with yellow-green and orange, sick coronas of color that linger far longer than any others.

Kevin's placid expression shatters in one sudden moment and he breathes out, his smile broken glass shifting in a loose frame. He swallows forcefully but his eyes are growing brighter, glowing with pain-fear-panic-

-then the colors stutter, forced under black again. His eyebrows furrow in concentration and his face twists through a dozen broken expressions before a calm blank mask slides over it.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about," And oh, but his voice is only a little bit rough, "But I think we both need to sleep! I'll check in with you in the morning, I'm sure you'll be feeling better then." And Kevin – his eyes flicker very faintly with color and he winces with every spark – smiles with frantic energy and leaves Cecil alone in his cell.

Cecil tilts his head back against the wall and squeezes his eyes shut for a long moment.

(Kevin does not stop walking just a little too fast until he is alone in his room. He is free of surveillance there, because he's earned it, because he is the best employee they have – but tonight he leans against the door for a long moment before he lays in bed – tonight he hesitates before giving into the sweet whispering oblivion of Strexcorp. It's shameful and sinful and /imperfect/, but tonight –

-Tonight, Kevin wants to /remember/.)

Cecil does not sleep that night. Instead, he paces in his cell and plans out his next show. He traces dreams into the air, like he does every night in front of his microphone. It does not matter that his body is caged – his voice is freer now than it has been in months, and that alone is a relief.

He is half way through composing an editorial on What The Hell Went Wrong when his double walks up to the plasma barrier once more. Cecil pauses, red-orange eyes narrowed and staring. Kevin's eyes are black, speckled with a myriad of colors, and his smile is strained at the edges.

"Hello, friend!" Cecil tilts his head. There is something in Kevin's voice, something that cracks the edge of his smile as it leaves his mouth, something in the flecks of color in his eyes, but what – "I'm sure you're feeling better now that you've gotten some rest."

Cecil's eyes flicker to the bed he didn't sleep in, and then back to Kevin's strangely twisting eyes, trying to read the colors in them. But the combinations are strange and faint and he doesn't know what any of them mean. "….I feel fine." He finally says, testing the sands.

Kevin smiles widely, as cheerful as ever. "Great! I've thought about it for a while, and I think you're ready to give your all to Strexcorp!" Cecil's eyes swirl yellow in surprise and confusion, because – what? He couldn't possibly think that, not after last night. Kevin's smile strains wider. "In fact, I'm going to give you a very special assignment."

Cecil blinks once, and then nods. "…okay?"

Kevin's smile twitches and the orange flecks in his eyes spark, burn the other colors away before being swallowed by purple and then by black. "Carlos, your scientist?" Cecil stops breathing. "See, we think he went into the wastes, and we're going to send four helicopters to look for him," Cecil drags in a single breath and knows his eyes are electric yellow with panic, because Carlos, /Carlos/, "But I think it would be better for everyone if you found him first."

Cecil's breath stutters again, his mind and eyes swirling, but Kevin keeps talking. "Those helicopters are the best that Strexcorp offers! They can travel 300 mph and are equipped with infrared radar, heat seeking missiles, and 400 rounds of light ammunition each. Not that I think we'll have to use those!" Kevin waves one hand in front of him, and then taps a pattern into the plasma barrier. It dissolves with cackles of electricity and Kevin smiles that cracked smile. "I think you know what you need to do."

It could be a trap, but Cecil knows, with the certainty of breaking news, that it is not. He steps out into the hallway and stares at his double for a long moment – stares at the faint burn of brown in those black eyes, the broken-mask smile. He swallows and nods. "…I do." He should not say any more, should run before this strange connection fades, but – "….thank you."

Those black eyes explode with color, expressing a million emotions that do not show in his smile, but all Kevin says is, "You should hurry, before the helicopters take off. Let me show you out."

Cecil nods, and follows in silence through twisting hallways to a door identical to a dozen others. Kevin keys in some code, and it slides away to show the still-familiar landscape of Night Vale. "You shouldn't be bothered if you leave this way." Cecil nods and turns to leave, his eyes swirling with worried brown and his every thought Carlos' safety. Kevin catches his arm. "…friend, can I ask you a favor? Will you remember something for me?"

Cecil looks back and sees swirling colors in Kevin's eyes, orange shame and purple determination and deep dark red grief. Debts are debts. He nods. "Of course."

Kevin smiles apologetically and his eyes shade into deep dark red. "…His name was Diego." Cecil's yellow eyes widen and then swirl into brown once more. "I don't know how much longer I'll remember that. Will you remember it for me?"

A dozen responses press at his teeth, questions and offers and "No, we will, /together/." But the colors are fading from Kevin's eyes again, back into numb black. Cecil knows he will get nothing more – no assistance and none of this strange commiseration. Even private rebellions have their cost, and some have already paid so much. So instead, he nods.

"Yes. I will remember." Kevin smiles sadly again, and it might be the most honest expression that Cecil has ever seen him wear. Cecil turns back to the canyon near his city and he wants. He wants the companionship he thought he would not find here. He wants to pull his double into freedom, where he can remember and mourn as he wishes.

But later. When every monster in this building has been torn apart and the wreckage is consigned to the Void, he will remind his double of the name entrusted to him. But for now, he breathes in the radon-tinted air, and with a final amber glance at his double, takes off running.

First, he has a scientist to save.


End file.
